Under the agreement, all new phones announced from today for sale in the EU will have a standard micro-USB socket for charging the device.

The companies who have signed up to the measure, which is intended to reduce the number of chargers sold and discarded in Europe include Apple, Nokia, Qualcomm, HTC, RIM, LG, Motorola and Samsung.

It will be interesting to see how this impacts on Apple’s next iPhone as these phones have always carried proprietary hardware interfaces.  Will the next iPhone switch entirely to micro-USB, will it have a micro-USB socket alongside the standard iPhone connector and will any change only affect handsets sold in the EU?

The move was initialised a year ago by the EU to try to reduce the overall carbon footprint and the amount of waste produced by the electronics industry and very quickly all the major manufacturers signed up.  It means that within a year or two mobile phone companies will begin to sell phones without chargers, instead expecting consumers to either buy one separately or use the existing charger that came with their previous handset.

Some manufacturers including HTC have already been using micro-USB sockets for charging their handsets for a couple of years, indeed I’m now on my second HTC phone with such a socket and charger.

How this is taken by consumers who may resent having to buy a separate charger, or who may went to sell or give away their old phone and charger remains to be seen.  The move is being broadly welcomed by governments across Europe however.

Google Voice has a ton of great features, and in a lot of ways fundamentally changes the way you’ll use your phone. A lot of things suddenly become easier with Google Voice – checking your voicemail, sending text messages, and more – and they’re all best dealt with through your computer.

But, as of now, Google Voice doesn’t inherently let you make calls from your computer. I mean, I’ve got a microphone and speakers on my computer, as well as a fast Internet connection – why shouldn’t I be able to make calls, ideally for free?

Well, as it turns out, I can – with a little legwork. Here’s how to set it up (I did this on a Mac, so PC directions might be slightly different – the same rules will apply, though).

Disclaimer: This is all assuming you’ve already got a Google Voice account. They’re sending out invites at lightning-speed, so if you don’t have one, go get on the list!

1. Download and Install Gizmo5 (create a free account, with no call credits – you won’t need them!).
2. Open Gizmo. In the “Home” tab of the application, click “Edit My Profile.”
3. In the tab that pops up, you’ll see, filled in, a number for “SIP number.” Copy that number (everything before the @ sign).
4. In Google Voice, click “Settings”, and then “Phones.”
5. Click “Add Another phone” and paste the SIP number from Gizmo (again, only what’s before the @ Sign) into the box.
6. Name the number “Gizmo” or whatever you want, and then Save it.

Now, to make calls:

1. Open Google Voice, and click “Call”
2. Enter the number you want to call
3. Make sure the Gizmo phone (whatever you called it) is selected as the “Phone to Ring”
4. Click “Connect”
5. You’ll get a pop-up from Gizmo, with your Google Voice number on the caller ID. Answer it!
6. Google Voice will automatically dial and connect the other person, and you’ll be chatting from your computer!

The whole process only takes about five minutes, and doesn’t cost a nickel. Because you’re using a SIP number, all the data is transmitted over your cable connection rather than your phone network. That means you’ll need fast Internet to really make this work, but also means it doesn’t cost a thing!

I’m not sure how long this will be around (I’m sure carriers won’t be fans), but for now it’s a fantastic solution for making calls directly from your computer.

Microsoft Phone Data Manager is not a full blown backup solution like the software that comes from the mobile phone company directly which can backup data like sms, games or protocols. It is a beta product on the other hand that could see those features implemented in later versions.

The major advantage of using the Phone Data Manager is that it works with phones from different mobile phone manufacturers. That is handy for a family that possesses different phones but only one computer and basically everyone else who is using phones from different cell phone manufacturers.

The list of working mobiles include phones from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. About 30 mobiles in total are listed on that page that have been tested and are working with the Microsoft Phone Data Manager but there are also a few that are not working. Most cell phone owners will probably have to try and find it out for themselves if their mobile phone is not listed on that page.

Microsoft has posted a user guide on their website that walks the user through the process of installing and working with the Phone Data Manager.

It supports and can identify bluetooth and usb cable connections. While it lacks on features it could be a viable alternative for users with multiple phones from different manufacturers.

This can be useful if someone called whose cell phone number is unknown. It can be also useful to check out old cell phone numbers that someone wrote down without adding a name to it, you know, those cell phone numbers that one gets in certain bars for example. Would be embarrassing to call without knowing the name of the person you are calling.

The biggest problem to find a cell phone number is the fact that they are not added in the phone registry which means one has to rely on online services to find the information. Many sites charge for access to their databases but some provide the information freely.

Now the easiest way to find out the information you are looking for is to enter the phone number into Google and hope that Google has a record of it. That method is uncomplicated and free.

It the cell phone number you are looking for is not in the results you might run into a few troubles. Most sites advertise their service as free but either redirect to a paid service or ask you to pay after revealing some of the information you are looking for.

Whitepages is offering a Reverse Phone Search which could probably be used to find cell phone numbers as well as does Yellowpages.

Everything else is does not seem worth the effort. I checked roughly 30 or so sites that promised a free look up only to find out that they did either sell membership directly or redirected you to membership sites.

Google is therefor your best choice to find a cell phone number followed by other search engines, the yellow- and whitepages plus social sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Basic functions that Nokia PC Suite 7 provides are backing up important data of the mobile phone, synchronizing all kinds of data like contacts, emails and calendars and providing Internet access for the computer the mobile phone is connected to.

That is obviously not all. The PC Suite can check the availability of new firmwares for selected mobile phones and instantly download them to the computer. Besides that you get a file manager and administration of messages, contacts and multimedia files on the mobile phone.

It’s furthermore possible to install applications on the mobile phone. My personal opinion is that it looks like the new version of the Nokia PC Suite comes with improved performance, everything feels a tad faster and more responsive.

It is however rather easy to create your own and it does not really take that long. Today I’m going to show you how you can easily create mobile phone wallpapers in no time at all.

The application that I’m going to use is called Weys. It provides a few default sizes for several mobile phones including a few Sony Ericcson, Nokia and Motorola phones but also an option to select a custom sized wallpaper.

If you select one of the mobile phones from the list the program window will change to that mobile phone and the display area is the area that will be captured as the wallpaper. The window can be moved around freely.

The custom window can be changed dynamically in size to fit the screen dimensions of mobile phones that are not available as templates.

The wallpapers can be saved in four different image formats including png, jpg, bmp and gif. Weys is offering a great way of creating a mobile phone wallpaper. It is missing an option to capture a larger screen area and reduce the size of it in proportion so that the screen would fit on the mobile phone.

Users have to use different version of Summerboard to install the application depending on their firmware. An alpha version for firmware 1.1.1 exists, users with an older version have to use the Installer.app. Detailed explanations are available on the homepage mentioned above.

Many Summerboard themes have been posted on the installer apps website. I have selected three nice looking themes from the list of available themes. Just explore the website to take a look at all available Summerboard iPhone themes.

Click on this source link to find out how to add the themes to your Iphone.

Several websites, like the Download Squad, have been reviewing a service called ByWiFi today that converted videos from Youtube and Metacafe into 3gp format, a format widely used by mobile phones so that everyone with a phone supporting the standard would be able to view those movies as well.

ByWiFi has some advantages and disadvantages compared to emTube. The advantage is that the converted files are normally smaller than the ones that you download with emTube and that Metacafe is supported as well. The disadvantage is that the video has to be converted first and that the wait time depends on the capacities of the ByWiFi server.

You do get a link and can reload that link from time to time to check if the video is already available which means that you do not have to be online all the time which would not be a problem if you are on a unlimited data plan.

I do prefer emTube because of its speed and independence from third party services except Youtube of course. Users without a Symbian S60 mobile phone on the other hand will probably like ByWiFi.

It gets even better. The Nokia N95 has a special version of that application that uses the phones accelerometer to rotate the video on screen if you rotate the phone to change between portrait and landscape mode. The emTube applications makes it possible to play Youtube movies either from the local flash memory of the phone or by downloading / streaming videos to your phone instead.

Videos can be browsed on Youtube and several comfort settings, like configuring the number of search results or if you want to start the video manually or automatically, make emTube a wonderful application that looks really promising.

via Tech Yard

As we all know, Google Calendar has the option to send free SMS reminders of tasks. Now all you need is to set up a calendar for your significant other using your own phone as a reminder, and one for yourself, with his/her phone number. Set the default reminder to SMS, for 5 minutes before the event takes place

Now if you want to send her an SMS, just create an event, and write the text as the “What” text. Set the event about 10 minutes ahead to be safe, and save. Sadly only 60 characters will be shown in the SMS, but this is still enough for a quick message. You can create events 1 minute apart and have 3 events span a single SMS if you want. You will have a “reminder” sent to your partner, quickly and for free!

He can either download the books to his computer and transfer them afterwards using the normal means of connecting his mobile phone to the computer or he can connect with his mobile to the Internet and download the books directly. The second option is probably only advisable if you have a free data contingent.

The books are optimized for mobile phones, some of the features are:

• Adjustable font size settings. Make the letters bigger or smaller according to your personal preference.
• Night-vision mode. Makes it easy to read in a dark room.
• Chapter navigation. Navigate the book by chapter.
• Pause & Auto-resume function. Automatically pauses and resumes to accommodate incoming calls.
• Auto-bookmark. You never have to remember where you’re up to in the book.

I would say the books are mostly classic literature books from authors such as Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Joseph Conrad and Sir Walter Scott. All books are out of copyright in the United States which means it is perfectly legal to download those books to your mobile phone.

Two versions are always offered. The first offering a better reading experience but requires a modern phone while the other does work on older phones as well. I would try the first version and see if it is supported by the phone and only if it is not supported I would download and use the second version.

Read More:

Books in my phone

The Internet has a lot of fake sites for mobile phones that promise free downloads but charge the user in the end anyway. It took a while to find excellent sites that live up to their promise. After finding several sites that offered free downloads for mobile phones I had to download applications and test them on my phone.

The major problem with applications for mobile phones is that they are most of the time not compatible with all mobile phones. You sometimes have a five or six versions of the same application and you have to download the correct one for your mobile phone.

Not everyone may agree with the selection that I made and I would love to hear about applications that you use.

Amaze – Free GPS Navigation

Flurry – Mobile Email and RSS

MobiChat – Use AIM, MSN and Yahoo on your phone

MobyExplorer – File Manager, FTP & FTPS client

Secret Codes – A mobile password safe (alternative is Mililock)

First, you do not have to pay for the ringtone. You probably have to pay for the CD instead or simply record the songs from internet radio instead. So, best case you pay nothing. Second, you are free to create the ringtone from any mp3 file you have on your pc and you are free to take any 20 or so seconds from that mp3 file which makes it unique. All you need is the freeware Audacity and a method to connect the mobile phone to your computer.

Here’s where Audacity comes in. Using the free, open source, cross-platform sound editor, we’ll trim your MP3 down to the exact 20 seconds you want and add any effects as well.

1. Download Audacity, install and fire it up.
2. Audacity can’t edit MP3′s out of the box, it needs what’s called the LAME compression library first. Download the lame_enc.dll file here and put it somewhere permanent on your hard drive.
3. From Audacity’s Edit menu, choose Preferences. On the File Formats tab, under “MP3 Export Setup,” hit the Find Library button and browse to the dll you just downloaded
4. Now the fun begins. Make a copy of your MP3 file and stow it in a temp folder somewhere other than where your music player will find it. Drag and drop it onto Audacity to open it. Using the Zoom and play buttons, find the 20 seconds of your song you want to be your ringtone. (It helps to zoom in so the time appears in 5 second increments.) Use the select tool to highlight the 20 second ring, and from the Edit menu, choose “Trim.” Now you’ve got your ringtone.
   
5. If you’re feeling bold and creative, browse around Audacity’s editing tools, especially the Effect menu. I like to add a “Fade In” effect to the first 7 seconds of my tone so that it doesn’t blast full-volume right away, if I’m in a quieter place and I’ve forgotten to silence the ringer.
6. When you’re done editing, from the File menu, choose “Export as MP3.” Save it as, say, ringtone.mp3.
7. Now, transfer the tone to your phone, either by corded or Bluetooth connection to your computer, or by emailing it to your phone’s address.
8. Once the file is on your phone, set it as your custom ringtone. How to do this will depend on your phone model; on Nokia phones running Symbian you can do it in the Profiles area. On my Sprint LG, it’s in the Settings area, under Sounds, Ringers.

source: lifehacker

• send periodically messages with your coordinates to family and friends.
• automatically send a message to a friend if hes only one block away from you
• Automatically sends a message if a person is not at the correct place at a certain time. The recipient has the option to see the movements of the last five hours.
• Automatically sends a message to parents if children stray from their route from home to school. Parents pay about $10 per month for the service that tracks their children on their way to and from the school.

See “Working late won´t work anymore for more information.

Update: Apps have taken the tracking to a new level throughout the world. It is now possible to install apps such as Guardian Angel to track teenagers and children via GPS technology. This particular app offers a 30-day history, and will even notice if a vehicle is used for transport. Additional information are then displayed, including the speed and direction of travel.

Parents can track their children on the service’s website. Once logged in, parents can see the current position of the cell phone and previous positions in the history.

The technology recently has been expanded with the launch of the company’s mobile telematics service. The service enables remote controlling of vehicles via mobile phones.

One of the features allows the owner of the vehicle to use a cell phone to monitor and track. While intended mainly if the car has been stolen, it can naturally be used to track family members or friends using the vehicle as well.